If you missed Tuesday’s WebJunction webinar, you can view it here, and you can join in on the follow-up discussion over at BlogJunction.

Wow thank you to everyone who attended the webinar today on learning at WebJunction. Emily is working on uploading the archive which will include video and audio as well as a copy of the PowerPoint slides. I’m working on writing a post for BlogJunction summarizing some of the ideas and answering all of the questions that were asked. Feel free to email me if you have more questions.

In the spirit of learning I have to share with you what it was like today from behind the scenes.

First, it takes a lot of time to prepare for a webinar. Luckily I knew that in advance from reading Michele Martin’s post about her first webinar. In a face to face session you can wing it and adjust your content based on audience reaction. Online it’s a little different.

Second, you have to rehearse. I rarely rehearse for face to face training, but because online learning is so different it is essential to rehearse and ensure that your presentation is in synch with the technology.

Third, as Douglas Adam’s says, “Don’t Panic!” It does not matter how many times you rehearse, how well you know the material, or how fast your Internet access is. Stuff happens.

I delivered today’s webinar from home where I thought I would have faster Internet access and less distractions. I had two computers set up, one as a presenter, one as a participant so I could see both sides of the presentation. I dialed in on a land-line rather than rely on VoIP. I wore a headset so I could talk and walk around to keep my energy up. I was prepared!

But stuff happens anyway. Within the first minute my headset speaker fell off the headset. Then about 5 or 10 minutes into the webinar I asked everyone to answer a question in chat, “In one word what is the difference between training and learning?” I waited patiently for responses. None. I asked the question again. Empty chat box. I panicked and thought, “Wow no one is interested in this topic.” Little did I know that the answers were flying by on the screen.

From that point on I was pretty much flying blind. Thank goodness for Emily and her skills as a producer. I think she knew before I even said anything that something was wrong on my end technically. For some reason both my computers lost their connection to the WebJunction classroom. Rather than make a fuss about it, I just relied on the printed out copy of the slides. (Thank goodness I’m not 100% green yet.)

During all of this my cat decided to make an offering to me by puking a hairball at my feet. I’m surprised no one heard him.

Then the call got dropped. I didn’t even know that happened on land lines. Maybe it was the cat and he really wanted to tell me something. Like I said though, stuff happens.

It’s funny now looking back at it all. Think about it. How many things do we try to control or force? Some things are beyond your control.

Lesson Learned: You have to be flexible and able to adapt. You never know when the unexpected is going to happen and when it does you have two choices, panic or roll with it. Sometimes it’s probably a little of both. The key is knowing when to sweat (ideally do it before you have an audience) and never letting them see you sweat (which I hope I succeeded in doing today).

Again thank you to everyone who came today to hear my ideas about learning and libraries. Stay tuned to BlogJunction for some follow up discussions later this week.

Last Monday on my way home from work I pondered the logistics of Oprah’s online class. Since I did not even register until an hour before the class it’s pretty obvious there is no limit on seats. I wondered how they would manage the chaos of a million people in a single chat session. Not to mention the bandwidth they would need to stream to that many people.

According to Oprah nothing like this has ever been done before. I can see why! What a huge undertaking!

For those of you who did not attend the session and are curious about it here’s how it worked. You register for an account on oprah.com and sign in about 30 minutes early to claim your seat. There is a quick download of a plugin after that you get to watch commercials until the show begins. Oprah appears in a live Internet broadcast with Eckhardt Tolle. Oprah interviews Tolle and they have a discussion about the book A New Earth. After about 20 minutes a Skype caller asks a question via video. Oprah and Tolle answer it. Every so often another question comes in from the viewers.

As I mentioned in my last post I had trouble accessing the site live as did many others. So I watched the recording the next day. I have not read the book and was not really interested in the content of the class. I was really there to observe how they did it and what the reactions were from the public. So far I’ve heard mixed reviews. Some people who were really interested in the topic enjoyed the conversation. I’d have to say that the experience for me was much like watching an episode of Oprah on TV. Not necessarily a bad thing, but not what I was expecting either. It’s hard for me to be at my computer and stay focused if I am not actively engaged in the learning process…via chatting, whiteboarding, some sort of interaction. As you can see from the screeshot below there is a workbook that you can fill out and the option to talk with others via a message board. Each message board has over 1,000 posts though! So it is a lot to try and keep up with.

If you are participating in the class I’d love to hear comments from you on your experience.

It’s Monday night. After a long day–first day back after being out for a week with the flu–I’m here at the computer. I’ve been anxiously awaiting Oprah’s online class.

I looked over the prework, performed my system check, logged in 30-minutes early.

It’s now 30-minutes into the class and I’ve already checked my email, read my RSS feeds, and started a blog post. I’m not engaged. I’m not learning. Oprah has lost me.

40-minutes into the class the audio and video is garbled. There are definitely bandwidth issues.

I check the site’s FAQ and read that if you have these problems exit and try to reenter. I can’t get back in. As a last resort the FAQ says to come back tomorrow and listen to the recording.

Sigh…at least I get to go to bed early now!

Earlier this week Tom and I delivered our first synchronous training to staff at PLCMC. We delivered three Learn to Learn Online* sessions and had about 10 participants in each session. The sessions were great. We only had one major technical problem and luckily that was on our side not the participants side.

Ironically this week Michele Martin at the Bamboo Project Blog delivered her first webinar. She wrote a great post, 9 Lessons I Learned From Running My First Webinar. Inspired by Michele’s post, I’ll share what I learned this week about delivering synchronous training.

1. Plan, develop, practice, then plan some more. Anyone who has delivered or for that matter taken online training will tell you it is more work than a face to face class. A lot more work! Give yourself plenty of time to plan and develop the training. Then try it out. Then revise it.
2. Don’t try to wing it. I can’t tell you how many face to face sessions I’ve had to teach with little or no time to prepare. The very first computer class I ever taught was on Microsoft Project and I’d never used Project before. Though it’s not a good idea, you can pull it off in a face to face class. But in a live, online class forget it! Why? Keep reading.
3. Silence is not golden! Silence will kill you in a synchronous environment. The minute you stop speaking without warning the participants will think they’ve lost their connection and confusion will begin. If you are starting a brainstorming activity, let the participants know by saying, “You have 30 seconds to _____ during that time you will hear silence. I will let you know when there are 5 seconds left.”
4. Script or notes? Know your style. Because you don’t want any silence, you need to have a script at least when you start rehearsing. Tom and I practiced a few times with a script then by the time we had our first class I was down to just a copy of the slides, an outline, and some key phrases I wanted to say. Some people, like Tom, are great with a script but when I use one it is painfully obvious that I am reading. I do better with just a few notes.
5. Have a producer. This is actually one of the most important lessons. Since we are going to be offering at least 60 LTLO sessions, I thought I could do some of them by myself. Tom and I quickly discovered why it is so important to have a producer. You want an active class. You want lots of participation. In order to keep that pace going, you need two people. One person just cannot talk continuously, annotate slides, and monitor and respond to chat. Additionally in our last session, Tom ran into a technical difficulty with his microphone. Had I not been there to back him up, the class may have come to a halt only 10 minutes in.
6. Record the session. I hate the way I sound on recordings! But I was able to pick up a few things after the first session and improve them for the subsequent sessions. For one, all that talking makes you want to talk fast. Don’t! Remember to breathe.
7. Let participants know up front who is monitoring chat. I noticed after watching the recordings that a few people were sending me private chat messages. I was not able to facilitate and monitor chat so some of the chat questions went unanswered or recognized by me.
8. No one knows when you make a mistake, so don’t call attention to it. This is true for face to face and online training. If you click on the wrong slide and it’s not glaringly obvious, just roll with it. The participants don’t know. Your presentation will seem more polished if you let the little mistakes go.
9. Each facilitator/producer needs to have two computers logged in to the live classroom. One computer needs to be logged in as the instructor and one needs to be logged in as a participant. You need to see exactly what your participants see. This is especially helpful if you are using application sharing. Additionally if you have technical problems on the instructor PC you can quickly grab the headphones and move over to the participant PC. This happened to both Tom and I during separate sessions.
10. Have fun! Yes it is a totally different experience to deliver live, online training. I was incredibly nervous before the very first session on Wednesday morning. But once we got going I started to have fun and forgot about how nervous I was. In fact once we really got going it was all about the learning and I didn’t even think about the two computer screens in front of me.

That is the goal with live, online training. It’s about the people and the learning and not the technology. I have to give credit here to Jennifer Hoffman and Kassy LaBorie at InSync Training. If you are still unsure about online training, take a free course from InSync. Once you experience synchronous training done right, you’ll wonder why you waited so long to jump in.

*These sessions were adapted from the Learn How to Learn Online sessions developed and offered by InSync Training.

WebJunction broke a record earlier this week with over 200 people attending the 10 Ways to Make Your Library Great in 2008 webinar. If you missed Ed Rossman’s presentation you can view the archive here.

To recap, here are the 10 things:

1. Use technology
2. Train, train, train
3. Polish your comportment
4. Reduce clutter
5. Handle noise
6. Handle conflict
7. Have a plan
8. Develop partnerships
9. Create great programs
10. Build camaraderie

All of these are great tips! I especially like #2.

Tom and I are presenting a pilot Learn to Learn Online class next Wednesday, January 23 from 10-11:30am EST. The session is one hour with 30 minutes tacked on at the end for feedback. The objective is to introduce staff to the synchronous learning environment. Eventually this will be required for any staff who take online classes. The session will be held online using Horizon Wimba. All you need is a computer with high speed Internet access. You can access the audio portion via VoIP or a landline (although the landline number is long distance).

We have several staff members attending but I’d like to have some input from other trainers or really anyone out in libraryland who feels he or she could contribute some constructive feedback.

Email me at lreed “at” plcmc.org if you are available and interested. Happy learning!

I’m looking forward to tomorrow’s WebJunction webinar, 10 Ways to Make Your Library Great in 2008. It starts at 2pm EST.

As you think about your resolutions for the New Year, why not resolve to make your library a great educational asset within your community? This webinar will show you how to leverage social networking tools such as del.icio.us and Librarything to enable knowledge sharing and create collections of information around professional development. Ten key themes are presented to empower library staff as well as to increase a library’s value within the community. Presented by guest speaker Ed Rossman, Interim Branch Manager for the Bertram Woods branch of the Shaker Heights Public Library and author of Castles Against Ignorance: How to Make Libraries Great Educational Environments.

See you online!

Today Tom and I delivered two drop-in sessions where staff had a chance to try out our new online learning platform Live Classroom. The sessions went very well. We only had two participants who had technical difficulties and I believe those may have been because they were accessing the network over a wireless connection.

The sessions were voluntary. Staff only needed to register in advance so that we could make sure they had an up-to-date version of Java on their PCs. We had full-time staff, part-time staff, front line circulation staff, managers, supervisors, collection management, administration — a wide range of participants.

My biggest fear, and I’m sure Tom’s too, was that we would have major technical problems. Thanks to all of Tom’s hard work and testing and to our IT department for getting our infrastructure upgraded to support this technology, it all went smoothly.

Most of the staff expressed immediate interest in what classes we’d be offering next and how can they get training as presenters so that they can use this tool for facilitate meetings and/or their own training. It’s going to be a busy year!

Here’s a screenshot of one of our whiteboarding exercises. I love the artwork that was added. Additional screenshots are on Flickr. There are several comments on the whiteboard that this will take some getting used to. I whole heartily agree! I’m confident though that if we create a positive learning experience for staff that they will come to love online learning. When it’s done right, you don’t even think about the technology.

Synchronous learning is finally coming to PLCMC. I’m so excited! What a great start to a new year!

Here’s a snippet of the email I sent out to staff:

An exciting new development in learning has arrived at PLCMC, O2L2 (Open Online Learning Live).

O2L2 was developed by technology scholar Tom Cole. O2L2 is a new, web-based platform that gives us the tools to deliver live, online staff and public programs, training, and more. Share content and exchange ideas with others—all from a computer at your location. Eliminating the need to travel between branches for programs, training, and meetings, O2L2 will save both time and money. This is not meant to replace any existing training or programs. Instead O2L2 will provide us with another avenue for learning and communication.

Staff interested in exploring O2L2 are invited to register for one or both of the following introductory sessions:

• O2L2 Drop in Sessions: Drop in for all or part of the hour to get an informal tour of O2L2 from technology scholar Tom Cole.

• Learn to Learn Online: A structured one-hour class that covers the tools within O2L2, explores the qualities of an effective synchronous learner, and gives participants a chance to experience an online class from start to finish.

We’ll be using WebJunction’s Live Space program to deliver the training.